On 3-4-2010 11:23, Michael Saunders wrote:
That's the feeling I'm getting. I'm finding it hard to do a lot of
basic things in Context. Maybe Context can do them and maybe it
can't, but there is no way to find out. If the claims that Context is
better really aren't empty, I would expect a lot of people to switch,
but I imagine 99% of them are in the same boat I'm in---trying to
switch and finding it practically impossible. I imagine many people
try, spend a week trying to get it to work and then give up and go
back to LaTeX.
why should users switch .. if something works ok there need to be good
reasons
Mojca's point, that Context is commercial, may be the key: it can be
free in name only but if the means of using it are kept secret, it's
only of benefit to Pragma. (Hans himself mentioned earlier that there
are many undocumented options for use in-house only that outsiders see
in the code and wonder about.)
context being commercial? it's costing us more than it brings in and
always had .. and as all code is public and most of the things that can
be done are no secret (e.g. showed at user group meetings)
the snippets of code that i referred to are simply too obscure to
document (and i tend to remove them) .. actually some experimental code
is being used and might evolve
now concerning documentation, you should explain one thing:
- a working day has 8 hours
- add to that weekends and evenings
- consider that writing code takes time
- and answering mails too
- and visiting user group meetings and doing talks there
- and writing some miminal documentation (or history docs or articles)
it looks to me that you're one of the few who either cannot imagine how
much time i (and taco and others) spent on something free and still have
some time left for our normal job as wel as some social time
but maybe i should settle on me being too imperfect and inefficient and
needing 16 hours instead of 8 which leaves me no time for writing
manuals (which would be bad anyway)
Taco's objection that no one helps with the community project to
update the reference manual is reasonable, but also predictable:
strangers cannot simply wander in and write the book. The knowledge
is in Hans's head (and maybe a few others), and only they can
communicate it. It's evident that they either can't or won't.
if the knowledge is in my head, how come that wolfgang can answer most
questions (and if he couldn't we'd have a real problem as at least i
have not more time)
I really would like to see the quality of computer typesetting
advance, and I was hopeful at hearing about Luatex/Context. I'd love
to see Context produce better output more easily than LaTeX, but so
far I'm putting a lot of effort into it to get some very disappointing
results. One might place some hope in a future (21st c.?) LaTeX 3
based on Luatex, but that would depend on Hans explaining how Luatex
works, and it seems doubtful that would ever happen.
well, it has been expressed several times (also at user group meetings)
that latex will not use luatex or at least not the lua in tex ... all
efforts with respect to that are personal initiatives
For now I'm sticking with Context because I still hope there might be
some value in it, but it's hard to find.
ok
Hans
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE
Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands
tel: 038 477 53 69 | fax: 038 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com
| www.pragma-pod.nl
-----------------------------------------------------------------
___________________________________________________________________________________
If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the
Wiki!
maillist : ntg-context@ntg.nl / http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context
webpage : http://www.pragma-ade.nl / http://tex.aanhet.net
archive : http://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/
wiki : http://contextgarden.net
___________________________________________________________________________________
